Who Is for Alliances With the Cadets?

Published:Ekho, No. 3, June 24, 1906.

      Published according to theEkhotext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1965,

      Moscow,Volume 11,

      pages53-59.Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Itsometimes happens that experienced and cautious statesmen, who appreciate
their responsibility for every important political step they take, send out in
advance young and somewhat incautious tyros to reconnoitre, as it
were. “No use to waste a clever lad,”[3]they say to them
selves, anticipating that the young men will blurt out some minor secret or
other, which will serve as a feeler.

ComradeN. Rakhmetov, writing inGolos Truda, gives one the impression
of just such a tyro fulfilling this intended mission. But that is exactly why,
from a certain angle, Comrade Rakhmetov’s very trivial article—we poked
fun at it

			      yesterday[1]–undoubtedly

acquires political importance. If an
influential organ of our Right-wing Social-Democrats likeGolos Trudapublishes, without a single editorial comment, an article calling upon the
Social-Democrats to ally themselves with the Cadets it shows that our Party is
suffering from some serious malady. No matter how much cautious, experienced and
shrewd men may try to conceal its symptoms, the malady shows itself in spite of
them. To keep silent about it would be a great crime.

Thefundamental mistake of the opportunist Social-Democrats lies in their
failure to understand what the decisive victory of the bourgeois revolution
means. Our Russian opportunists who, like all opportunists, belittle the theory
of revolutionary Marxism and the role of the proletariat as the vanguard,
constantly labour under the illusion that the liberal bourgeoisie must
inevitably be the “boss” in the bourgeois revolution. They totally
fail to understand thehistorical role of, say, the Convention in the great French Revolution as the
      dictatorship of the lower strata of society, those of the proletariat and
      the petty-bourgeoisie. They totally fail to understand the idea of the
      dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry as the only possible social
      bulwark of a fully victorious Russian bourgeois revolution.

Inessence, opportunism means sacrificing the long-term and permanent interests
of the proletariat for flashy and temporary interests. In the period of the
bourgeois revolution, the opportunist Social-Democrat forgets the importance of
the revolutionary wing of the bourgeois democrats and pays slavish homage to the
successes of the non-revolutionary wing of these bourgeois democrats. He loses
sight of the essential difference between the liberal-monarchist bourgeoisie
(Constitutional-Democratic Party, Party of Democratic Reforms,[4]etc.) and the revolutionary, particularly, the peasant, bourgeois
democrats. We have drawn the attention of our Right-wing comrades to this
difference hundreds if not thousands of times. The Bolshevik draft resolution
for the

			       Congress[2]very clearly stated that the liberal bourgeoisie is trying to
make a deal with the old regime, is wavering between revolution and reaction, is
afraid of the people, and afraid of the free and all-sided development of their
activities; and that all this is not due to chance, but to its fundamental
interests. We said that we must utilise the democratic phrases uttered by this
bourgeoisie, and utilise the timid steps it takes; but we must not for a moment
forget its “compromising” and treacherous strivings. The peasant
democrats, on the other hand, owing to the objective conditions in which the
mass of the peasants find themselves, are compelled to act in a revolutionary
manner, in spite of the fact that they are not fully politically conscious. The
fundamental interests ofthesebourgeois democrats are not at present
impelling them to seek a deal, but are compelling them to fight determinedly
against the old regime. To avoid sacrificing the fundamental interests of the
proletariat in the bourgeois-democratic revolution, a sharp distinction must be
drawn between the liberal, or“Cadet”, bourgeois democrats, and the peasant, or revolutionary,
      bourgeois democrats.

Itis this that the opportunist Social-Democrats do not wish to understand,
although events have brilliantly con firmed the correctness of this distinction
and continue to do so. In the Duma, too, the peasant democrats become a distinct
group by being compelled to draw closer to the revolution, and to strive to free
themselves from the yoke of the Cadets. The Cadets and Octobrists versus the
Trudoviks and Social-Democrats—such is the alignment that hasalready
taken placeboth on the question of instituting elected local land
committees, and on the question of the Cadets’ attempt to “curb”
freedom of assembly.

Thecomrades of the Right wing of Social-Democracy are blind to these
facts. Dazzled by the immediate situation, they are inclined to identify the
party that at present predominates in the Duma, i.e., the
Constitutional-Democratic Party, with the bourgeois democrats in
general. N. Rakhmetov is particularly naïve in repeating this old mistake of
the Mensheviks. While the “old hands” artfully get round the
unpleasant deductions that must be drawn from wrong premises, the tyros chatter
and blurt out the truth. If the Constitutional-Democrats represent the genuine
bourgeois democrats in general (and not merely the worst strata of the
bourgeoisie, and small upper strata at that) then, naturally, the necessary
fighting alliance between the proletariat and the bourgeois democrats must be an
alliance with the Cadets. The proletariat can, and must, be in the forefront of
the fight for the victory of the bourgeois revolution, while strictly preserving
its class independence. Butwithoutthe bourgeois democrats it cannot
carry through this revolution to the end. With whom, then, should it
“march separately, but strike together”? With the liberal democrats, or
with the peasant democrats?

Withthe liberals, with the Cadets, twitters Rakhmetov. Why hesitate? The Cadets
are on top; they are more conspicuous; they are flashy and glib! With the
Cadets, of course, with the Cadets! “It is much easier for the Cadets to
twist and turn,” says Rakhmetov, “when they are surrounded by a solid
wall of hostility than it would be if they were approached with an offer of apolitical coalition,· Much more can be achieved by the pressure of public opinion on the
      Cadets (by sending to the Duma resolutions, instructions, petitions and
      demands, organising protest meetings,negotiations between the
      Workers’ Group and the Cadets) than by senseless, and therefore
    useless, rowdyism, to put it strongly” (our italics).

Herethen is a completely formulated deduction, for which Rakhmetov fully
deserves a testimonial bearing the inscription: “From the grateful
Bolsheviks”. Political alliances with the Cadets, negotiations between
Social-Democrats and Cadets—what a clear and precise slogan! All we
have to do now is to spread this Menshevik slogan as widely as possible
throughout the workers’ party and put to the workers the question:Who is
for alliances with the Cadets? Whoever knows anything of the proletariat
will have no doubt about what the answer will be.

Thesame issue ofGolos Trudacontains what is substantially a correct
warning by the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. against Social-Democrats
merging with the Trudoviks. ButGolos Trudahas rendered the Central
Committee of our Party a disservice by converting this warning into a cloak for
advocacy of an alliance between the Social-Democrats and the Cadets! Nothing
could be more calculated to discredit the Social-Democrats than this action of
combining a—substantially correct, we repeat—warningagainstSocial-Democratsmergingwith the revolutionary
bourgeoisie, with the advocacy of analliancebetween the
Social-Democrats and the opportunist bourgeoisie!

Andwhat moment have our Mensheviks chosen to advocate such an alliance? The
moment when the alliance between the revolutionary and opportunist bourgeoisie,
between the Trudoviks and the Cadets, isbreaking down. A very
appropriate moment, indeed, for our good Rakhmetov to choose for launching his
crusade! The very moment that the Trudoviks— with the help of the
Social-Democrats be it said—are beginning to break away from the Cadets,
to throw off their yoke, to vote against them and to rally against the
“alliance” between the Cadets and the Octobrists. And people like
Rakhmetov have the presumption to talk pompously about revolutionising the Duma,
when, as a matter of fact, they are helping the Cadets to degrade the Duma.

Rememberthis, gentlemen: alliances and negotiations with the Cadets are the
worst way of exercising pressure on them. In practice, it will mean blunting the
independent struggle of the Social-Democrats, and not Social-Democratic pressure
on the Cadets. It is those who relentlessly expose every false step of the
Cadets that are helping to revolutionise the Duma and are “exercising
pressure” on the Cadets. Refusal to support these false steps exerts far
more pressure on the Cadet Duma than any negotiations with the Cadets with a
view to supporting them. The Workers’ Group refused to vote for the reply to the
address from the throne: the Cadets had emasculated it. The Workers’ Group has
refused to support the Cadets; thereby it has discredited them in the eyes of
the people and has shifted morally the focus of public attention from the Cadets
to the “Left” core of the Duma. By ruthlessly denouncing the
half-heartedness of theCadetDuma we are revolutionising the Duma
and—what is more important—the people who believe in the Duma. We
thereby, in effect, issue a call to throw off the Cadet yoke, to act more
boldly, determinedly and consistently. We thereby also cause a cleavage among
the Cadets and make their ranks waver under the joint assault of the
Social-Democrats and the Trudoviks.

Weare carrying out the policy of the proletariat as the vanguard fighter in the
revolution and not as an appendage of the most timid and pitiful upper ranks of
the liberal bourgeoisie.

[1]See pp. 50-52 of this volume.—Ed.

[2]See present edition, Vol. 10, p. 158.—Ed.

[3]Lenin quotes the first line of the Russian soldiers’ song
which mocked incapable Russian generals (General Read among them) during the
Crimean War:

“Nouse to waste a clever ladYou just send along Réad...

Theauthor of the song was Lev Tolstoi, then an officer in the
field.

[4]Party of Democratic Reforms—P.D.R.—one
of the political
groupings of the liberal-monarchist bourgeoisie, formed in 1906 during the
elections to the First State Duma. It occupied a position to the right of the
Cadet Party, being in fact an insignificant offshoot of the
latter.